Ballast Point returns to CO

Just had sculpin for the 1st time on tap at tellers tap house. Pretty tasty!

 

Which is great for this release, worthless for the future. Just put the damn dates on the bottles!

 

If we're talking year-round, and bottles I can pick up at the store and drink in my underwear at home, then I'm waiting for your list.

 

I have it on good authority that all future cases will be at least three months old. Sculpin needs time to set in the bottle!

 

Well, that adds a lot of complications. CO is a draft state after all. Somehow other states always get a pass in that department, be we never do. I'll just name off all the ones I think are on par. Some are in bottles/cans and many aren't:
Superpower, Modus Hopperandi, First Cast, Y&Y Himalayan, Lowdown C3IPA, Stapleton Citra IPA, Odell IPA, and for stronger items - Myrcenary, Backcountry DIPA, Maharaja, Dugana, DD DIPA, Fanboy, and 7437. Bull and Bush Sofa King would be up there, but they don't seem to want to brew that one much.

 

Especially with IPA's, is it fair to compare tap offerings to bottled offerings? Especially if you are probably trying most of these tap offerings fresh at the source? I don't think so, personally.

Only tried Scuplin a couple times and really enjoyed it. I'd put in the same league as my favorite Colorado IPA, which would be Odell's (though would choose an Odell IPA over Sculpin most times). If I was still in CO, I would be pretty stoked to have the choice between some Odell IPA, FW Union Jack, and BP Sculpin. That said, I know Union Jack was never as big an offender as others but I often had the damnedest time finding fresh sixers of it. I could never find it with less than one month on it, which isn't terrible except for the fact that I always found Odell IPA sixers that were younger than a month. So the choice between the two was never really much of a choice....it was always Odell. Hope that doesn't happen to Sculpin, but imagine it will.

 

I agree, but there is a bizarre undercurrent in Denver that it's actually "easier" to drive around town and collect desirable bottles, box them up, pay to ship them to another region, wait a week or two for your return trade, and THEN get to enjoy a world class IPA. OR you could just save a lot of time, money, and effort and just drive to one of the draft-only places and fill a growler that you can enjoy that very day or week.
Trading can be a lot of fun and it's the only way to get a lot of great beers, but it's sometimes treated as a necessity for certain (common/fresh) styles, which I'm trying to combat a little bit.
I don't think there's a single beer-centric place in the country where people are somehow afraid or embarrassed to say the local stuff is as good as anywhere else.

 

OK, I've cracked the bottling code

http://www.ballastpoint.com/date-stamp-guide/

I have 14265 on my bottles, which would put it bottled on Sept. 22

 

Would that be the 265th day of the 14th year of the 21st century?

 

Correct.

 

Proof that breweries like to mess with us. If breweries were wedding bands they'd only play

EDIT: Darnit, is it possible to link to something without making the video show up (you have to click the link)?

 

Anyone else think that Sculpin tastes like Pliny? In a good way obviously. I accidentilly had them back to back and thought they were very similar, but did not think about it until I was into my Sculpin and no Pliny left.

 

I do. Very similar. For the people that crave Pliny, it should probably be an excellent substitute...assuming we keep getting fresh supplies.

 

wow I love local brews and you've named a nice list, but I don't think I see 6 beers there as good or better than the two Sculpins I had last night (taking out DIPAs which aren't really fair comparisons--but I'm on record numerous times here w/r/t my duganA love). The primary concern I have w/ Sculpin is price, but when you throw it against beers I have to go out to drink, and pay $5 a pint for (or more, at Lowdown) or DIPAs in large format bottles, or 4-packs at a comparable per bottle price, Sculpin's not such a bad price all of a sudden (until Sucks-in-6-pack season)

If we keep getting two week old Sculpin it is going to do VERY well here.

 

Sculpin is just about a perfect IPA for me. I'd put it up there with Odell IPA and Bell's Two Hearted as my favorites of the style that are mass produced and in sixers year-round.

$16/sixer isn't bad when you consider that's $4.89/bomber and when Pliny is over $7/bomber (at $5.50/510ml)

As long as it's fresh, I'll keep buying it.

 

I'll have to dig up my receipt from Grapevine but I didn't realize it was $16...somehow I thought $13.99-ish but I was BS-ing with Chris and didn't notice.

I might not have paid $16 knowingly!! (a little bit of a tightwad...)

(BTW, a Sucks quart at $6.99 works out to $4.80 for a bomber or $15.72 a sixer....just sayin')

 

Personally, I just don't see it. It's good, but I just wasn't wow'd by it. I don't really think all the much of Sucks either, so I admit I might be an outlier. When we did a face-off/Voltron of Pliny, Superpower, and Backcountry DIPA I felt Pliny was the worst of the 3. I find Pliny and Sculpin to be damn close to one another. I dunno. I think the world of Heady Topper, the HF hoppy beers, Zombie Dust, Masala Mama and some others...but then again I was pretty disappointed by the "Sue" beers and don't even get me started on Alpine.

IMO, I think there's a lot of hype going on in the IPA world and it almost feels like the other states seem to rally behind their local beers to the point that they're almost a punchline. Out here when we do have something great, people feel apologetic and or add a "but" to everything.

No matter what, If I want a hoppy beer, the easiest options are still at Comrade, Station 26, and Dry Dock. They're cheap, fresh, and plentiful.

 

You paid $13.99 plus tax.

 

see, that's what I thought.

hoppytobehere's $16 comment threw me off.

At $13.99 all the above comments are even truer, vs. bomber pricing. That's equivalent to a $4.26 bomber, and a better deal than Sucks extrapolated to $6.20 a quart. Of course Sucks is a DIPA...

Maybe I'm a sucker for hype and le dernier cri, but this is attractive pricing vs the alternatives. I can also see somebody saying, I'll stick to $9.79 a sixer for Odell, but a chacun son gout, bitches.

 

It was $15.99 at Argonaut. Weird, they're usually the cheapest in town...